But I hate science fiction

Here's the latest meaningless meme. I plugged in several of my favorite posts and I got the following results:

Arthur C. Clarke
H.P. Lovecraft
Edgar Allan Poe
David Foster Wallace
Arthur Conan Doyle
Ray Bradbury
J.K. Rowling

Lovecraft and DFW came up several times. The posts that used a lot of technical terms tended to go towards Lovecraft and the poems where I was expressing frustration thru sarcasm leaned towards DFW. I think the Rowling came from a flowery sappy post.

So I then decided to plug in some of my academic papers. A paper I wrote on Virginia Woolf came out like Lovecraft. OK. So I plugged in a paper I wrote about the Navajo Code Talkers. Again: Lovecraft.

And the paper I wrote on Chaucer's Reeve's Tale:

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So I guess Ulysses wasn't overrated after all.

Last 12 opening lines/7 of anything

Two memes today

---

Elizabeth tagged me for an open-ended meme. It's especially difficult because I'm a narcissist and I've already told every fact and story about me that I think is worth telling—somewhere. Even here.

This forces me to think back. It's tough to make a list about me interesting. So my standard shall simply be things about my childhood that might be just a tiny bit embarrassing, but that were mostly just typical of a childish mind.

1. For about 3 years in elementary school I told my friends that I was 10% blind in one eye from being hit with a bat. For no reason.
   
   
2. When I was 10 I joined a softball league. I didn't really care about playing. At all. I just wanted a chance to win a trophy because all three of my sisters had: 2 of them for a fire-prevention-poster contest and one for a good-citizenship award. My team won the championship. yay.
   
   
3. The chimney sweep Step in Time dance in Mary Poppins scared me. Those hooligans were getting out of control. And it was bad enough that it came right after that freaky Chim Chim Cheree song. But when Mary Poppins did that spinning thing and they focused on her head she looked like pure evil. And I hadn't even seen The Exorcist yet.
   
   
4. When I was 9 the Halloween episode of "CHiPs" Rock Devil Rock gave me nightmares. Even tho it was a breakout performance for Donny Most. The three messages stick with me still: Moloch must die! then Moloch will die! and finally Moloch is dead with his fiery breath! I think this grammatically escalating threat sent me into linguistics as therapy.
   
   
5. I had a sticker collection.
   
   
6. When I was 7 years old I heard this song and I couldn't wait to grow up so I could fall in love for the first time. Anne made it sound so wonderful.
   
   
7. When I was about 4 years old my father shaved his beard. My older sister asked what I thought and I spat out He looks stupid! My sister was shocked that I could be so brazen. But I didn't care. I knew I was speaking the truth. I was upset because I assumed it would never grow back. After all, the hair on his head never did.
   

---

The Ridger has posted a nice overview of the year in Greenbelt posts.

It's a nice exercise because looking back at my posts shows me how prosaic and uninformative my first lines are:

January: Every year someone up at Lake Superior State University releases a list of banished words and phrases.

February: Several months ago I put up a poll and some discussion about the midwest.

March: Bill Cunningham is "a bit of an historian".

April: I'm still here and I'm OK.

May: See I was alway told that baldness is inherited from the mother.

June: I had to go dark.

July: My fingertips need to dance on the frets instead of the keyboard for now.

August: Blogger thinks I'm suspicious.

September: The old brain-bender about 'how do we know that blue looks the same to everyone' is pointless.

October: We can categorize the uses of and references to expletives and slang into several strategies and effects.

November: On the way to Chicago Midway Buffy announced that we needed to make a pit stop.

December: I just started listening to a podcast from last week of the Diane Rehm Show.

Two memes

Meme the First:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
3) Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
4) Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.

The Ridger tagged me.

This is a tough one because I've never done any study of historical biography. Any facts that I give are sure to be the same facts that are found in an elementary textbook. I'm having trouble even thinking of a figure that hasn't been featured in an A&E special.

Well -- here are some facts about the Venerable Bede:

1. Born ca 672 CE (Tho he is said to have popularized Dionysius Exiguus' convention of using Anno Domini to mark years.)

2. From the age of 7 he was raised and educated in the monastery of St Peter and St Paul at Wearmouth and Jarrow.

3. His study of astronomy and the calendar indicates he knew the earth was spherical.

4. He is one of three patron saints of lectors.

5. He wasn't much of a traveller.

6. His most important work was Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People).

7. You can pray to him. Like this:
Careful Historian and Doctor of the Church, lover of God and of truth, you are a natural model for all readers of God's inspired Word. Move lectors to prepare for public reading by prayerfully pondering the sacred texts and invoking the Holy Spirit. Help them to read in such a way that those who hear may attain learning and edification. Amen.

(now whether he'll ever get the message...)


Meme the Next:

I've also been tagged by Monica at Dreaming Without Memory in Strangled Sleep.

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I've seen this meme on some other blogs lately. The first time I saw it Dante's Divine Comedy was next to me. That would have made for a great paragraph that even included the word "fen" -- a favorite of mine. But I wasn't tagged then. Now I have to be true to the instructions. And there are two books within the span of my arm's sweep. I'll quote both.

1. Phonology in Generative Grammar, Michael Kenstowicz:

Taking the voiceless affricate series as representative, Navaho matches its [ts,č,ts] to Sarcee's [ts,ts,č]. While the corresponding [ts]'s in the first series suggest Proto-Athabaskan *ts, it is unclear whether to reconstruct *č or *ts for the second or third series; and in any case, another consonant will still be required to distinguish among them. If one did not believe in the regularity of sound change, one might simply conclude that there is no systematic correspondence in these consonants between Navaho and Sarcee (other than a negative one that [č] never matches).

2. Experimental Syntax: Applying Objective Methods to Sentence Judgments, Wayne Cowart:

It is also worth bearing in mind that the standard statistical sense of "significant" has no necessary connection to questions about theoretical importance. Differences may be simultaneously significant (from a statistical point of view) and boring (from a theoretical point of view). Whether a statistically significant difference matters in some larger sense can only be determined by examining its relevance to alternative theories that bear on the situation in which the difference arises.

I used to be cool.